I'm not running to compete with anybody. At the same time, I do run quite a bit. I'm a middle-the-pack runner, though, running for the middle means several other things here, too. This is not a blog to help others train. It's just a place I hope to encourage a sustained, consistent, contemplative effort in my running and writing.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Dragged the crapradoodle around the 3.4 mile loop (35:27) today, and crap she did: she hasn't lost her touch. First run since, well, let's just get this part out of the way up front:

February 01

Wednesday: 16.0

Thursday: -----

Friday: 4.0

Saturday: 4.0

(Week 37.4)

February 05

Sunday: 9.9

Monday: 4.0

Tuesday: 4.0

Wednesday:-----

Thursday:------

Friday:-----

Saturday:-----

(Week 13.9)

February 12

Sunday: -----

Monday:-----

Tuesday:-----

Wednesday:-----

Thursday:-----

Friday:-----

Saturday:-----

(Week-----)

February 19

Sunday:-----

Monday:-----

Tuesday:-----

Wednesday:-----

Thursday:-----

Friday:-----

Saturday:-----

(Week-----)

February 26

Sunday:-----

Monday:-----

Tuesday:-----

Wednesday: 3.4

February: 45.1 miles

Year To Date: 175.7
miles.

Running Days: 29
Days off: 28

I have not been a pleasure to live with for the past three weeks. Turns out running is such an integral part of my life that when I'm not getting out, I get kind of miserable. Not downtrodden or desperate, I don't suppose, but I have definitely felt grumpy for the past month.

* * *

In other news, here's a picture of my spouse's foot:

She calls it her zombie ankle, but I wouldn't suggest walking on it, even if you are a zombie.

And, here's further proof that she is a better human being than I: she injured her ankle on Sunday during a roller derby practice. She rested, iced, compressed, and elevated her foot immediately and for the next two days. She took arnica and brionia to help heal her connective tissue and reduce swelling. She was thoughtful about her movement and took care to not inflict additional damage. Today she started doing lunges and squats again. She walked cautiously but normally on it. She took care to continue in the healing process.

Me, when I got hurt, I whined about it, got sullen, and used my newly found time to eat more. I did not one time, during my convalescence, go to the gym to lift weights or go for a bike ride or do yoga on the Wii. Clearly, there are any number of things I could have done to help recover more quickly, but, I've said it before, I can be a bit of a jerk when it comes to my own health -- I think it's very human of me to behave this way, if it makes you all feel any better.

* * *

Today's run, by the way, was tender. I tried to run thoughtfully, but was afraid I would put too much pressure on the muscles in my lower back. So I tried to run casually, but was afraid I would slip and fall and injure my back even worse. In this regard, I should have stayed home, so I wouldn't be caught up in lousy paradoxes. But, really, I settled into the slowest pace I could muster and the world felt great. Within a quarter mile, I started making plans to run an ultramarathon or a thousand mile race or from here to the moon (metaphorically).

We'll see how my back feels tomorrow. For today, I'm just very happy to be a touch sweaty again. The rest of the family is withholding their opinion about that.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Now, just because I haven't run for a week and a half doesn't mean that I've been completely inert. My back still hurts, but it's getting better daily, and I think I should be out on the road again in a few days. In the meantime, for the injured, there are other things we can do: stretches, yoga, meditation. Most importantly, I think would be continuing to eat well.

Me, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I see the value in it. If I had a pulpit, I would preach it. I find myself, rather, wallowing around feeling stupid, as well as bad for myself. Also, I'm overeating. I had two ice cream sandwiches the other night, and for breakfast this morning, I ate the four Hershey-kisses sugar cookies my daughter was saving from Valentine's Day.

I have been walking to work when possible, so that's good, and I still always take the stairs (luckily the elevator in my building is broken, but I also take the stairs because elevators seem so unnatural). I certainly, meanwhile, could be doing calf raises each day or maybe some light upper-body workouts. But suddenly, when I'm not running, I've been acting as though I hardly have time to blink, let alone add workouts.

Does this make me a bad person? I don't think so. Just a bad runner. I mean, I probably shouldn't have eaten my daughter's cookies because she might want them when she wakes up, but the extra calories and utter lack of protein do not speak to my humanity. I think it's too easy to conflate what we do with what kind of person we are, and I find that about myself. In fact, I've been feeling all kinds of negative feelings about myself lately, thinking I'm hardly worthy of all this really fantastic carbon I've been blessed with, and that's been bringing me down in general. It's a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and I wasn't even thinking about my life as such until this moment in the blog. In fact, I wasn't even thinking about writing a post this morning, but now, I'm glad I did. I'm going to make a salad for lunch. I was saving the cupcake that my daughter thought she was saving for herself, but I'll eat my salad instead.

Truth be told, and this is no big surprise to anybody who had been following my blog from before. It's clearly my own fault that I got injured. I was adding unnecessary challenges to my daily workouts, increasing the intensity and distance of my maintenance runs, while I bulked up on everything else as well. It was stupid. I know that. I thank everybody who didn't point that out to me, that it was my own fault. The stupidity of it is also part of the reason I've been feeling like a dweeb lately. But again (and I know this, we all know this), what the stupidity amounted to was poor training in theory and practice. The stupidity does not speak to my self worth as a human being.

Monday, February 13, 2012

This is not an unfamiliar injury for me, I admit it. I started having back problems when I was thirteen, when I stopped playing Atari and joined cross country, wrestling, and basketball during their respective seasons. I'll have to direct you to my chiropractor for more specific details about what was wrong with my back, but I can say that by the time I got through high school, I was generally used to having some sort of ache going on above my ass and below my crown (the crown of my hair, of course, my real crown has not yet arrived in the mail, even to this day).

I quit those sports and snowboarded for a year. I quit that and worked at the mill. I started writing poetry at a cramped antique desk underneath a heavy duty word processor. I worked for a mason. I worked at another steel mill. I did other things. All the while, some sort of ache -- at times more serious than others.

I only mean to say, by all this, that my back is not so terribly bad this week, but it's showing potential to be much worse. I have the luxury of taking a few days off or a week off without destroying my training entirely, and I am taking advantage of that, but pain is embarrassing. Especially pain that has no outward and physical proof.

My back feels better every day, even though I continue to do stupid things like pick up my daughter when she falls asleep on the couch, and (though I could easily set her on the hardwood floor and push her to her room and roll her into her bed) I carry her around and tuck her in (though, again, I could easily just drop a whole bunch of towels and stuffed animals on her -- I mean the house is already pretty warm).

I suppose this is one of the most frustrating feelings for anybody who's injured -- the ways in which the injury affects not only our athletic pursuits, but also our day-to-day activities. It's lame, and I hate not being able to do the things I'm supposed to do like beat the kids at ping pong. They deserve that from me, don't they? At least if I had crutches, they might feel a little more like I'm injured and not just worried that one day soon they will be better than I at ping pong.

Still, a friend did rescue me from my continuing self pity by insisting that I go for a walk with him yesterday. I realized that the brisk walk did not aggravate my back the way a run would, so I'm going to have to start figuring out some reasons why I can't go for walks until my back is better or else I'm going to look foolish in retrospect.

Friday, February 10, 2012

I'm guessing I'll be out of commission for another few days. My back feels somewhat better, but still quite sore. While I stand beside my initial comment that being injured is dumb, I'm trying to maintain a positive attitude, trying not to punish myself for taking time off. Traditionally, that is, when I've been hurt in the past, I go to the other extreme of health -- I seek out fast food and buy gallons of ice cream; I stay up too late and slouch through the hallways; I grow despondent and blame the world for my own shortcomings.

Today, though, I'm willing myself to have a better attitude about the whole mess. Always a fan of the fake-it-till-you-make it approach to most things in life, I'm going to think of this nonrunning time as a stretch where my body can recuperate in full -- not just my back injury but all the little creaks and groans that have been coursing around for the past month and a half. When I start back up, I plan to be stronger and more focused than I was three days ago.

Meantime, I really wanted to run last night -- it had been a long day at the end of a long week, and I wanted to sweat some of it out. Avoiding an extra thousand calories of cookies yesterday was a major success. I expect you all are applauding this moment, so I'll give pause until that passes . . .

. . .

. . . and you all are doing great as well. In fact, this weblog has helped me notice other runners in the world, helped me to see so many folks on the roads and biketrail and sidewalks around town. It has also helped me see so many facebook friends who are updating running logs and including workouts in their statuses (or is that stati?). So good on you all. Another round of applause.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Okay, I admit it, maybe playing basketball last night after my run was not the best decision of the new year. And, while I am loathe to give up one of my high intensity runs, my back hurts too much to get out there. I'm taking an unscheduled day off. It sucks. I was looking forward to hill repeats today.

I'm trying to be Zen about this. I blame myself. Which is the most reasonable thing, I think, since it's my fault. I simply haven't cared this much about a sustained, consistent training for fifteen years, so the idea of taking a day off makes me sad.

Meanwhile, one might think that taking a day off from running would suddenly open up glorious gluts of free time to do all kinds of things that I wouldn't otherwise do. One would think I'd find myself getting bored. Instead, my life fills right up with other things.

So I'll rest tonight and take an Advil. As soon as I feel able, I'll try a maintenance run. Being injured is dumb.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Four miles (32:30) on the treadmill today, another much needed run. I do often ask myself, self, why do you run? And I don't always know how to answer myself. I don't always know why I run. But days like today, when I'm worn out by prepping, grading and teaching, it's a much easier question to answer. It's not a good answer, necessarily, but days like today, running feels good.

I kept my regular 9:00 minute pace, and added six quarter-mile up tempos (nothing fantastic 4X7:30 and 2X6:00 pace). I also ran the first 2.7 miles at an incline of 1.0. I don't know why I did that, really. Probably for the same reason I added the up-tempos . . . because I don't know why.

I'm full of answers this evening.

Now for my dietary tip: better eat those leftover ice-cream-sandwich cookies j and l left here after the Super Bowl before they go bad. . . . I'm not a very good human.

Last night, I dragged the crapradoodle around in the dark for 40:00 minutes. We got in our 4.0 mile maintenance loop and even managed to fun fast for a few short stretches. I needed a run last night -- as the day went by and went by, I kept coming up with reasons to stay inside, though I really wanted to get out. As a result, I admit it, the kitchen is a mess. I have more grading to do today than I otherwise would. And I didn't get to watch the most recent episode of Downton Abbey.

But there are only those certain number of hours in a day -- I've heard 24, but I swear when I'm about to fall asleep, it seems like I've been up for weeks; and it seems like I've only had two-and-a-half hours to get everything done -- I believe Dad would say, "It's like trying to fit ten pounds of shit into a five-pound bag." Yes, if I were Forrest Gump, that's what life would be like according to me.

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of speculation about my shoes. I thought today would be a good day to share what I know about footwear.

For instance, these are my teaching shoes:

I wear them to teach in, because they're lightweight, have lots of cushioning, and when I hand back graded paper assignments, I can run like hell.

These are my carpentry shoes:

I wear them to build things in, because they're lightweight, have lots of cushioning, and when someone asks me to give them a hand around the house, I can run like hell.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Off, and once again, I found myself wanting to get out for a run on the only day I force myself to take a day off. It's like Modest Mouse tells us: "I know what I have and want, but I don't know what I need." I've often heard that the most important day of a runner's week is the day off. It makes sense, logically and physically, and one would think that would be enough, but I don't know what I need.

Friday:

I ran an extended version of my maintenance loop, such that I ended up going 4.0 miles (33:30). I'm going to start increasing my maintenance miles, hoping that it will help on my longer runs.

Saturday:

Another, though slightly different 4.0 mile maintenance loop (36:00). I have begun adding small bits of speed to my maintenance runs as well. I figure I might enjoy maintenance more if I vary the speeds, maybe find a few new routes.

Sunday

My first concern as I started my run today was this: I wasn't entirely convinced I'd recovered from my long run on Wednesday. I still felt a certain tightness, an additional tiredness, that I was attributing to the 16-miler. I decided to take a bit of a longer warm up than usual to help limber up. But before that:

I had in mind to run my Lancaster hill workout today. That flopped when I couldn't find my watch. I waffled for a bit about whether I should run the workout anyway without the watch. You know, man, just go with the flow, run hard and enjoy the sunshine, don't worry about my time, man, it's cool, just relax and enjoy it.

Nope. I dismissed that idea outright. I decided to run the 2.2 miles to the rec center to help with the tightness. Once there, I ran another mile warm up on the treadmill and eleven quarter-mile repeats at 11 mph (5:27-pace) with about two minutes in between. Then I ran the 2.2 miles home. Why 11, Jackson? Why not twelve or ten? What's with the odd prime number?

Well, here's the thing. I had in mind to run 12 quarter-mile repeats, followed by a very fast tenth of a mile, in order to simulate a 5K. That seems like a fun thing to do. The first few were relatively easy. The recovery minutes were necessary, but I wasn't desperate for them, just getting into a comfortable stride.

I hit the middle third and started . . . I don't want to say struggling, but . . . I was definitely feeling the burn. It was a fine burn, followed by much needed recovery time.

When I got around to the final third, I was really pushing hard on each uptempo run. My legs and lungs were feeling the workout, true, but more important to this particular scenario, my belly was objecting to something I must have eaten last night. After my tenth quarter-mile, I had to sit down. After eleven, I had to sit, and I wasn't sure if I'd get back up. I decided the twelfth quarter-mile might do more harm than good, so I called it a day. The run home was slow, I'll wager, but since I didn't have my watch on me, there's no telling, really, how slow.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Prerun meal: one cup of coffee, one cup of Kefir, two handfuls of peanuts. Yum!

I should mention that last night I decided to run my long run all at once, all in the morning, for fear that I would get caught up in other things . . . and I think I've made the right choice, but before I say any more about that:

Have you tried Kefir? It's a dream. Probiotic, 11g of protein. It's got carbs, it's easy on the stomach . . . it's the milk that drinks like a pudding! I came up with that slogan on my long run this morning. Thought I'd share it, so everybody could join me in celebrating.

I had in mind to run my 7.5-mile loop twice, but I changed my mind midstride and ended up running until I ran out of bike trail -- I figured, in part, I'd be less likely to stop in at my house after one 7.5-mile loop. I like my house, but it's too easy to stop in for a pee and find myself caught up for the next five hours taking care of the kids or grading papers or fixing the p-drain in the bathroom sink.

The bike trail is nice -- flat, predictable, uncrowded, goosey -- but a touch boring. I prefer hills, have always preferred hills. And turns. And to run along it for a total of fifteen miles, well, that's a lot to ask of this guy:

I kept a little bit better than a 9-minute pace, and turned around after eight miles (1:15:18). I did run a negative split (1:12:50). That's apparently good, I heard someone say in high school. And I've often checked folks' times and said, "Oooooh, negative splits. Way to go." But I don't know why I say that. Just something to say, I guess.

The two noteworthy events of the run are: 1.) first time in my life that the middle third of a run has been the best, most pleasant, easiest. While my knees and hips ached during miles 5-10, and I had sometimes a great notion * during 11-16, I coasted along miles 6-10. I felt fine. I even thought, maybe I'll add on my 3.4 mile loop to celebrate the long run when I get home. Nope! When I got home, I had another cup of Kefir -- Kefir, where have you been all these years -- some leftover green curry my spouse made the other day, and all the water in the spigot.

* Sometimes I live in the country,
Sometimes I live in the town,
Sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump in the river and drown.

And 2.) when I had about 35 minutes remaining in the run (1:55), I just about hit the wall. No specific ailments -- I didn't suddenly cramp up or get dizzy or dehydrated; I didn't lose my breath; my legs didn't give out -- I simply felt like I couldn't go on. Then I recalled an article from Runner's World and I'm going to guess it was from summer 2008 that focused on the psychology of exhaustion. The claim of the piece is that we (humans) tend to begin feeling exhausted just before we reach the halfway point of our physical limitations. I thought, yeah, right, I'll show you physical limitations, and I kept my same pace with the new determination to collapse sometime soon. That'll show Psychology! Unfortunately, I started feeling better after another mile and a half, and made it hope without losing my shit, so to speak.

At any rate, it's true, I celebrate folks who run the ultramarathons, especially as I have yet to run a half, but my celebration of the great distance runners shouldn't stop me from being very pleased with my own version of the long run. So, here's to me. I'm happy about today's run.

Tuesday: ~ 4 miles. 36:43. I parked the car next to my spouse's office so she could drive home. Then I ran around for a while with no particular design on where I was going. I ran passed a house I used to live in and passed another I'd like to live in, then to the one where I live now. So I had a lot of stuff to think about. None of which I remember right now.

Post Script: You all might be interested in the "Anywhere5K" project -- pretty cool idea for runners. But whether you're a runner or a sane person, check out the post from January 27 "Another Reason to Not Like Treadmills."

Other Blogs I Write

My Running Past

I ran cross country in high school, what a rush! The races, the practices, great teammates, the long bus rides -- I loved it all. When I got to college, I found I didn't have enough time to run, because I was too busy trying to appear unimpressed by the world. I started running again a few years ago with nothing really in mind, except that I used to like it, and maybe I'll like it again. I do, and I'm trying to use this blog to figure out why.